Arsenii Salai, BETER Sports: “Our attendance at ICE stands to demonstrate our commitment to innovation and leadership”

BETER Sports Head of Strategic spoke to Focus Gaming News about the expectations ahead of ICE London 2024, the company’s growth during last year, and its main goals for 2024.

Exclusive interview.- Arsenii Salai, Head of Strategic at BETER Sports granted Focus Gaming News an exclusive interview to speak about the upcoming ICE London 2024, the growth of the Setka Cup, BETER Sports’ achievements during 2023, and its main goals for this year.

Can you highlight some of BETER Sports’ key achievements in 2023?

Last year was very productive for us and one in which we significantly improved our product offering. We focused heavily on enhancing our world-renowned in-house Setka Cup table tennis tournaments, launching new fast-betting markets and extending our portfolio of disciplines.

“In total, we organised more than 110,000 sports events over the 12 months, a record for the company. We rolled out a new basketball tournament series, BSKT Cup, and enhanced our table tennis offering by adding Ping Pong Point tournaments.”

Arsenii Salai, Head of Strategic at BETER Sports.

Our team also began productively collaborating with national federations and competition organizers to provide national basketball and table tennis tournaments with live data and odds worldwide in India, Colombia, Azerbaijan and other countries.

This saw demand for our content rise, and this, in turn, led to new partnerships with the likes of Kaizen Gaming, BetConstruct, Novibet and others. We also strengthened the existing partnerships we have with leading aggregators and operators.

And regards this year, what strategic plans, specifically related to the Setka Cup, do you aim to leverage in 2024? How do you plan to differ from other companies?

Setka Cup is our flagship product, and we have bold plans to take it to the next level this year. The number of events each month under the Setka Cup is already significantly greater than those of other official table tennis tournaments. Over the coming 12 months, we aim to further enhance our market-leading position. This will be done through the growing community of fans that we are helping to foster through our content, and by ramping up content production. This will enable us to offer the largest number of parallel matches, meeting bettor demand in more markets than ever before while ensuring our operator partners can offer more of the most profitable contests to their customers.

“We provide the widest range of markets on Setka Cup events, including unique options that are exclusive to us, such as «player one/player two total points» and «total odd/even points». The margin for the Setka Cup matches is on average 8.8 per cent, which is much higher than with rival products.”

Arsenii Salai, Head of Strategic at BETER Sports.

Ultimately, we are always working hard to bring new sports disciplines to our portfolio while improving the quality of those we already offer. This includes bringing in more experienced sports players, ensuring they adhere to the rules of our Fair Play policy and providing more betting markets and opportunities.

It has been over five years since the Setka Cup launch, and the competition is continually evolving. What are the main goals or results that have been achieved thus far, and what should operators and bettors expect this year? 

Setka Cup was initially launched in a small arena with a few players and a small number of bettors wagering on the outcome of matches. Five years later, and with constant work from our dedicated team, it has evolved into the number one table tennis tournament series in the world with more than 9,000 monthly events running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Over this time, we have also grown the community of players to more than 700 individuals with content production now taking place across seven cities in three European countries.

We have also made tremendous progress when it comes to Fair Play and ensuring the integrity of games. We have an internal Integrity team that has made a huge impact when it comes to the number of suspicious events and matches being reported, especially compared to other providers. Matches are running at 0.02 per cent in terms of match-fixing and fraud, one of if not the lowest in the industry. This is only because of our dedicated team and the constant monitoring of matches, the education program we have in place, and collaboration with federations and investigative bodies.

Integrity activities have significantly contributed to the success of the Setka Cup. Additionally, we are currently working on plans to launch our proprietary table tennis events in a new region. I can’t say which for now, but what I can say is that table tennis is incredibly popular in the country and launching it here will allow bettors to enjoy wagering on table tennis events through high-quality content with plenty of fast betting markets to choose from.

In 2023, you enriched your portfolio with two new disciplines: ping pong and basketball. What has been the operators’ reception of these additions? What factors do you consider when adding new sports to your broad portfolio?

The launch of BSKT Cup and Ping Pong Point comes from our desire to enhance our portfolio with more disciplines as we look to meet bettor demand for fast betting content. Our customers asked us to increase the number of events we were running, bring new products to the table under BETER brand, and add more disciplines for bettors to experience and bet on. Of course, we see it as our responsibility to produce the content that operators need to provide the experiences their bettors are seeking. The launch of the BSKT Cup and Ping Pong Point met their needs.

At the moment, we provide more than 500 monthly ping pong matches and 90+ basketball events. But it’s not just the number of events that is important, so too is the integrity of each match and thanks to our Integrity team, we are confident that each contest is conducted in line with international standards and with the lowest risk of match-fixing. Ultimately, this is what sets us aside from other competitors.

You are set to attend ICE 24. What can attendees look forward to regarding your presence as a company at the event? Are there specific announcements you aim to convey there?

We will be showcasing our portfolio of products including Setka Cup, Ping Pong Point and BSKT Cup. Each month we are running 10,000+ events and are excited to show delegates the thrilling, fast betting experience they provide.

Our attendance at ICE stands to demonstrate our commitment to innovation and leadership in the evolving sports betting space. On a personal note, I’m looking forward to welcoming visitors to our stand – N5-340 and to sharing more insights and plans for 2024.